So there are some concerns on the trading quests. They are short and reward money. Thats it. Nothing more.

I want to change some of that. As of right now, most Trade quest can be completed by simply buying the goods and trade them in for profit. Too easy, get boring fast.
Currently sell prices are 1/3 of the buy price, which is good. Merchants should not be stupid by requesting their own wares for more than what they sell them for.

This is my goal for trade quests in the end:
1. Total sell price of the reward should never be higher than the buy price of the required items (so just buying all required items will at max make it even).
2. Trade quest that reward goods for goods, will have equal or more value (but again, sell price will never be more than buy price).

What does this mean?
Trade quests will reward increased higher rewards in the form of goods. As long as you keep trading goods for goods. Quests that reward gold, will return the buy price at max.
This way trade quests require a bit more thinking, as obtaining goods this way, will be equal to buying goods for the sell price instead of the buy price, which will result in 66% cheaper goods.
Using the Goods for Gold quests, will allow you to sell the goods at buy price instead of sell price. Which will give you a profit of 300% but only if you acquired the goods through trading.

The idea behind this, is not to remove an easy way to make gold in the game, but to add a more challenging way to do quest.

This could also lead to the increase of reward and required goods for quests.
This might also lead to ships with the Merchant perk (e.g. +15% reward from quests and +50% more cargo space)

In 2.5, beyond a certain point in the game, it was necessary to buy the trade goods most of the time. Every delivery quest called for 1000 units of this or that. Find 2 quests for the same good for the same trip, and you were forced to buy at least 750 units of it.
Yes, the profit margins in 2.5 were quite high, especially with the HQ delivery quests at the higher levels in the game. When you got way up there in 2.5, you could buy the trade goods at the market, accept an HQ delivery quest, and then sell them for 275,000 profit per quest, more than a million per sailing. That was wild ... oh, and BTW, the player's gold counter in 2.5 could handle more than a billion. Been there, done that, became a billionaire at level 7839.

Now the trades are incredibly small, 1 or 2 units of stuff, up to the rare 18 bundles of rope or 8 piles of stone. With a bit of effort, most players can accumulate a decent amount of cargo by hunting Lusca ships. So they won't be buying too much cargo. Those same Lusca ships usually generate a dozen or two units of Tier 5 trade goods, which can be sold in the Cove Market for a nice pile of gold. This is a decent money maker. Once you hit the middle levels of the game ( > lvl 90 ) you need a few million gold to do upgrades. You don't need 250M, but 3M to 6M is enough, assuming you can get the upgrade cards.

What was a way to get rid of excess cargo in 2.5 is now one of the best money makers in 2.6.n. What I call "delivering groceries"; you load up your ship with everything, and go around to the settlements and sell stuff at their markets. If you have good Affinity, you can make pretty good money, far more than can be made in trade missions at the beginning levels of the game. The Cove Market pays poorly; I think 50% of their sale price has been the standard rate up until now. Don't mess with that unless you make it better. 60% perhaps.

Right now, battle missions are paying quite well, 10x what a delivery mission pays. What's the gold investment in battle, when normal cannon balls are free? No more than a couple thousand to repair your ship afterwards, and 5000 to refresh your crew. By your reasoning, should battle missions only pay 7000 at the most?

So I understand your view that just buying goods at the Cove to sell at the Settlements shouldn't make a lot of profit, but it should be more than a zero sum game. 10% profit ... to cover shipping charges perhaps.
From a harsher perspective, the most expensive way to buy cargo is at settlements that you are at war with. This works, since the trades in 2.6.n are small. So if you have to go this route, choose the war price as your purchase number, and the cove sale price (or the war sale price, whichever is worse) and make that your maximum reward amount, plus a 10% profit margin. But always there must be some profit, otherwise you are wasting the player's time, and they get sick of it and will dump the game. It's not like there aren't 100 other pirate games out there, and most of them run ads on your game all the time! Don't kick the gift horse in the nutz.

When I started 2.6.n from the beginning, the first few dozen game levels paid so poorly that every trade was a loss if you had to buy the cargo from the Cove Market. That was VERY annoying. No, worse; it just plain sucked ass. Bad design.

Nothing wrong with having larger trades with larger cargo rewards. But don't let it get out of control, like the "sucker quests" in 2.5 that rewarded more cargo than the biggest ship could carry. But keep a moderate profit margin. Perhaps even a slightly higher margin for larger trades. IIRC, in 2.5 the farther away a settlement was from the Cove, the higher the profit margin. Because time is money, right?

Nothing stopping you from coding the enemy ships to "scent" when a player has lots of cargo and to attack. Maybe without a chance to bribe or retreat. Like real pirates would do, eh? Your ship has 4000 units of cargo? Get ready to be attacked.

The idea of trade quests was to engage the user to attack ship, steal their loot and then make profit of it. But that doesn't happen if you can just buy goods and still make a profit. I agree that the defeat ship quests are rewarding more. Which is the point. But thy not just run a trade quest at the same time?

The gold investment in battle is your upgrade cards and your repairs indeed. One of the reasons upgrading at higher tiers goes slow, is to make the game less rushing. I can remember in 2.5 and before, at some point you would just be stronger than the enemy at any time, period. After that it was just collecting equipment cards you would never use and stockpiling gold you would only use to make more money. But the money didn't go anywhere. Since 2.6.x there is always something to stockpile your money and cards for, even if it take a very long time.

2.6.7 is not released yet (I thought it was released last Friday, but meh). I hope it will be released later today.

For next Alpha I wanna try to change the trade quests and see if player can trade up their goods and see how much they can make per hour compared to the battle quests. It would be nice to have battle and trade quests be equally profitable.
But this will require lots of time to test, which I don't have. That's why we need 'da alpha playars'.

I will see if I can change the trade quest and maybe scale the requirements and rewards depending on the players current wealth.

Hello,
I have a great Problem with the most of the new trading quests.
I am lvl 525 and for example I should collect 628 bolts of silk for 31K Cloth . I have only room in my Warehouse for 3120 pieces atm.
Can you tell me how this could work?
Greetings from Germany,
Donnie

It doesn't work. It's the old Sucker Quest in new form. While Collection Quests go straight to your warehouse, regular Delivery Quests take and send cargo to your ship. If you don't have space, then the quest won't go through. Don't be fooled.